Public Spaces

With the unveiling of the Frank Rizzo statue on the steps of the Municipal Services Building planned for Jan. 1, this question comes to mind: What other works of art do the public spaces of the city and suburbs need? What person, event or thing would you like to see so honored in your neighborhood? Why? Send essays of 100 words or less by Jan. 11, including a phone number for verification, to Community Voices/Heroes at the addresses listed in the Where to Write box above. Questions?

The Kimmel Center is getting a beauty makeover, its most substantial since initial construction ended after opening day in 2001. On the heels of a recent acoustical adjustment to Verizon Hall, the Kimmel is renovating two major quasi-public spaces in hopes of becoming more hospitable and profitable. Work on the rooftop garden is under way. Ficus trees atop the Perelman Theater have been cleared to make way for a new glass-and-steel structure - a large glass box within the larger glass bubble - that will shield users from the extreme temperature swings that have rendered the space largely unusable.

In his new book, The Cosmopolitan Canopy : Race and Civility in Everyday Life , Elijah Anderson tells of a rainy afternoon at Reading Terminal Market. He was doing what he does best - conducting a bit of folk ethnography. People-watching, in layman's terms. But anybody who knows this sociologist knows he's anything but a layman. Though he teaches at Yale now, Philadelphia is who he is and where he still lives. The ethnographer spent most of his professional life at Penn, where he did the research for two of his acclaimed books, Streetwise and Code of the Street.

Once this beach resort south of San Francisco had a prosperous downtown where a single lane of traffic meandered among an eclectic mix of architectural styles, its charm marred only by the trolls. Many people were scared away by the trolls - the homeless, the mentally disturbed and the deadhead veterans of too many electric Kool-Aid acid trips who gathered on the Pacific Garden Mall. At night some of these downtown denizens slept under bridges spanning the San Lorenzo River two blocks away, hence the local name: trolls.

How charming! If we do not give spare change to people living on the street; if we enforce a policy of maintaining public spaces, including public toilets, for use by the public; if we recognize that the problems of homeless substance abusers are getting worse, then we may be able to reclaim a sense of public order in Center City. Unfortunately, this will not be enough. Getting tough with the homeless requires that we get much tougher with ourselves. Unless we are willing to assign scarce police manpower to revolving rousts of homeless bench-dwellers and grate-sleepers, solutions depend on the availability of long-term, in- patient drug-treatment programs, low-income housing and group homes.

Without fanfare, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has opened its new two-floor art-handling facility - 62,000 square feet hewn from schist and granite deep beneath the museum's Fairmount knoll. Begun in November 2010 at the base of the facade facing the Schuylkill, the $81 million facility was substantially completed by October 2012, about $5 million below budget. Though not everything is quite finished, it has been increasingly busy in recent months. This bit of practical engineering - the workaday heart that pumps life through the museum's public spaces - represents the complicated, all but invisible answer to a difficult question: How to add to the existing 600,000 square feet of self-contained neoclassical stone set atop a hill?

Readers weigh in on Sunday's story "Stunned by sale, but not giving up. " Chris Bordelon Philadelphia chrisbordelon@gmail.com Little good will come of efforts to keep the Thomas Eakins painting languishing in its little-visited display. Although "many" may view the work as "the very heart of Philadelphia's cultural identity," how many Philadelphians have seen the painting? While it is an important work, it is unlikely that its departure would deprive the city of its cultural vitality.

Baptists Coming. The National Baptist Convention will hold its 2002 annual meeting in Philadelphia, drawing 25,000 to 30,000 delegates to the city. . . Frozen Out. A New Jersey court ruled that a Camden County woman may destroy frozen embryos left over from her failed marriage despite her ex-husband's objections. . . Smoke Studied. Hoping to garner support from angry restaurant owners, City Council agreed to set up a panel to study a controversial measure that would ban smoking in most enclosed public spaces.

CITY COUNCIL took a rare break Thursday from its summer recess to address violent crime in the city's parks and recreation centers after several recent shootings and the rape of a 12-year-old girl occurred in public spaces. "Parks have become abandoned by people who are afraid to use them," said Councilwoman Cindy Bass, who is chairwoman of the Committee on Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs and who called for the committee hearing. Michael Resnick, the city's public-safety director, said the city is battling an uptick in overall violence and a 4 percent increase in violent crime in and around parks and rec centers compared with the first eight months of last year.

Citizens create public spaces The disturbing plan to turn Dilworth Plaza into a "managed place" that will cost taxpayers $50 million is yet another bit of foolishness concocted by the people who do not understand the history of government attempts to "create" public spaces ("Dilworth Plaza plans get airing," Tuesday). Read Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities and you'll realize that government attempts to develop "nice" public spaces have been terrible failures.

Without fanfare, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has opened its new two-floor art-handling facility - 62,000 square feet hewn from schist and granite deep beneath the museum's Fairmount knoll. Begun in November 2010 at the base of the facade facing the Schuylkill, the $81 million facility was substantially completed by October 2012, about $5 million below budget. Though not everything is quite finished, it has been increasingly busy in recent months. This bit of practical engineering - the workaday heart that pumps life through the museum's public spaces - represents the complicated, all but invisible answer to a difficult question: How to add to the existing 600,000 square feet of self-contained neoclassical stone set atop a hill?

Sometimes, when guests step inside the Washington Square condominium of Gail Caskey Winkler and her husband, Roger Moss, there's a classic double-take moment. Past the typical 1960s architecture in the building's public spaces, a sudden sense of grandeur grabs you - all the way from antiquity forward. In the vestibule, a classic black-and-white patterned floor of marble and granite, rests a first-century B.C. amphora, a carrying vessel that looks its age. But on a wall nearby is an unmistakably modern steel sculpture.

By Rick Sauer and Donald L. Haskin While for-profit developers across the country are postponing or even canceling major projects, community development corporations are confronting their challenges and revitalizing Philadelphia neighborhoods. A few examples: Last year, the $45 million Aramingo Crossings Shopping Center opened on the site of an abandoned Tioga Pipe plant, once seen as a major barrier to Port Richmond's progress. Anchored by a Walmart and a Lowe's Home Improvement store, the center created more than 700 jobs.

CITY COUNCIL took a rare break Thursday from its summer recess to address violent crime in the city's parks and recreation centers after several recent shootings and the rape of a 12-year-old girl occurred in public spaces. "Parks have become abandoned by people who are afraid to use them," said Councilwoman Cindy Bass, who is chairwoman of the Committee on Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs and who called for the committee hearing. Michael Resnick, the city's public-safety director, said the city is battling an uptick in overall violence and a 4 percent increase in violent crime in and around parks and rec centers compared with the first eight months of last year.

PARIS - It's a July evening on the terrace of the legendary Cafe Flore. A coiffed woman sips chilled wine, another savors her chocolate eclair. The one thing to complete a perfect picture of Parisian life? A dash of French rudeness. It comes from the waiter, who snootily turns away a group of tourists: "There's no point waiting," he shrugs, even though there are many empty tables. "No space outside. " Such rituals of rudeness have long been accepted by visitors as part of the price of enjoying such a beautiful city as Paris.

Temple student Ian Van Kuyk was arraigned this week on charges of obstruction, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. Van Kuyk, a film and media arts major, was arrested by Philadelphia police last month after he photographed a routine traffic stop in front of his apartment building for a photojournalism course. Asserting his First Amendment right to record police activity in public, Van Kuyk had refused when officers asked him to stop taking pictures. The officers allegedly pushed, shoved, and threw Van Kuyk to the ground before handcuffing him. Van Kuyk's girlfriend, who tried to rescue his camera, was also charged with obstruction and disorderly conduct.

The Kimmel Center is getting a beauty makeover, its most substantial since initial construction ended after opening day in 2001. On the heels of a recent acoustical adjustment to Verizon Hall, the Kimmel is renovating two major quasi-public spaces in hopes of becoming more hospitable and profitable. Work on the rooftop garden is under way. Ficus trees atop the Perelman Theater have been cleared to make way for a new glass-and-steel structure - a large glass box within the larger glass bubble - that will shield users from the extreme temperature swings that have rendered the space largely unusable.

ALMOST SINCE the day it was announced back in 2006, Revel, the $2.4 billion pleasure dome on the eastern end of Atlantic City's boardwalk, has been seen as a "game-changer. " That is, gaming industry observers and insiders have pinned the mega-resort as the Great Blue Hope (for its acres of azure exterior glass) that will restore AyCee's former glory as the epicenter of East Coast gaming and entertainment. Whether or not Revel can compel former Atlantic City visitors to return while simultaneously creating a new customer base of those who heretofore have resisted the seaside gambling capital's particular charms can be charted as of April 2, when the 6.5 million-square-foot behemoth begins welcoming the public.

A DRAWING of a naked woman scrawled with the catcall "Damn Girl You Thick," Beyoncé song lyrics spray-painted on a wall, a small sticker with the scribbled message "osama is a muslim. " The funny, the political, the colorful, the arresting: These are the images that catch Conrad Benner's eye as he walks around Philadelphia, camera in hand. Benner, 26, posts pictures of street art to his blog StreetsDept.com, which averages about 1,000 page-views a day, and sends on-the-fly pictures out on his Twitter account, @streetsdept, to his 2,636 (as of yesterday)

There are rules. If you share your deepest personal secrets with thousands of strangers on the Web, you can't talk. You can smile, wave, play background music. You can even make a two-handed "heart" sign. But talk? No. If you're making a "secrets video" for posting on YouTube or Tumblr - as hundreds of young people, predominantly women, are doing - you must write your secrets out in flash-card fashion. You hold each card or paper up so your audience of strangers can read.